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A 

SERMON OF SLAVERY, 



DELIVERED JAN. 31, 1841, REPEATED JUNE 4, 1843, 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST: 



THEODORE PARKER, 

MINISTER OF THE SECOND CHURCH IN ROXBCJRY. 



1^ / 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY THURSTON AND TORRY. 

M DCCC XLIII. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by 

Thurston and Torry, 
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 



/ 



y <Jt 



SERMON OF SLAVERY 



^ 

" Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, 
his servants ye are whom ye obey ; whether of Sin unto Death, 
or of Obedience unto Righteousness ? " — jRom. vi. 16. 

In our version of the New Testament the word 
servant often stands for a word in the orio-inal, which 
means slave. Such is the case in this passage just 
read, and the sense of the whole verse is this : — " If 
a man yields unconditional service to Sin, he is the 
slave of Sin, and gets Death for his reward." Here, 
however, by a curious figure of speech, not uncom- 
mon in this Apostle, he uses the word slave in a good 
sense — slave of Obedience unto Righteousness. I 
now ask your attention to a short sermon of sla- 
very. 

A popular definition has sometimes been given of 
common bodily slavery, that it is the holding of prop- 
erty in man. In a kindred language it is called Body- 
property. In this case, a man's body becomes the 
possession, property, chattel, tool, or thing of another 
person, and not of the man who lives in it. This 
foreign person, of course, makes use of it to serve 
his own ends without regard to the true welfare, or 
even the wishes of the man who lives in that body, 
and to whom it rightfully belongs. Here the relation 
is necessarily that of Force on one side and Suf- 
fering on the other, though the Force is often modi- 



4 SERMON OF SLAVERY. 

fied and the Suffering sometimes disguised or kept 
out of sight. 

Now man was made to he free, to govern himself, 
to be his own master, to have no cause stand between 
him and God, which shall curtail his birthright of 
freedom. He is never in his proper element until he 
attains this condition of Freedom ; of self-government. 
Of course, while we are children, not having reached 
the age of discretion, we must be under the authority 
of our parents and guardians, teachers and friends. 
This is a natural relation. There is no slavery in it ; 
no degradation. The Parents, exercising rightful 
authority over their children, do not represent human 
Caprice, but divine Wisdom and Love. They assume 
the direction of the child's actions, not to do them- 
selves a service, but to benefit him. The father re- 
strains his child, that the child may have more free- 
dom, not less. Here the relation is not of Force and 
Suffering, but of Love on both sides ; of Ahilitij, 
which loves to help, and Necessity, which loves to be 
directed. The child that is nurtured by its parent 
gains more than the parent does. So is it the duty 
of the Wise, the Good, the Holy, to teach, direct, 
restrain the Foolish, the Wicked, the Ungodly. If a 
man is wiser, better, and holier than I am, it is my 
duty, my privilege, my exaltation to obey him. For 
him to direct me in Wisdom and Love, not for his 
sake but for my own, is for me to be free. He may 
gain nothing by this, but I gain much. 

As slavery was defined to be holding property in 
man, so Freedom may be defined as a state in lohich 
the man does, of his oimi consent, the best things he is 



SERMON OF SLAVERY. 0' 

capable of doing at that stage of his groioth. Now 
there are two sorts of obstacles which prevent, or 
may prevent, men from attaining to this enviable 
condition of Freedom. These are : — 

I. Obstacles external to ourselves, which restrict our 
freedom, and 

II. Obstacles interned to ourselves, ivhich restrict 
our freedom. 

A ^ew words may be said on the condition to which 
men are brought by each of these classes of objects. 

I. Of the Slavery ichich arises from a cause exter- 
nal to ourselves. By the blessing of Providence, 
seconding the efforts, prayers, tears of some good 
men, there is no bodily, personal slavery sanctioned 
by the Law amongst us in New England. But at 
the South we all know, that some millions of our 
fellow citizens are held in bondage ; that men, women, 
and children are bought and sold in the shambles of 
the national capital ; are owned as cattle ; reared as 
cattle ; beaten as cattle. We all know that our 
Fathers fought through the war of Independence 
with these maxims in their mouths and blazoned on 
their banners : that cdl men are born free and equal, 
and that the God of eternal justice will at last 
avenge the cause of the Oppressed, however strong the 
Oppressor may be; yet it is just as well known that 
the sons of those very fathers now trade in human 
flesh, separating parent and child and husband and 
wife, for the sake of a little gain ; that the sons of 
those fathers eat bread not in the sweat of their own 
brow, but in that of the slave's face ; that they are 
1* 



6 serjMON ok slavery. 

sustained, educated, rendered rich, and haughty, and 
luxurious by the labor they extort from men whom 
they have stolen, or 'pur chased from the stealer, or 
inherited from the purchaser. It is known to you 
all, that there are some millions of these forlorn 
children of Adam, men whom the Declaration of 
Independence declares '* born free and equal" with 
their master before God and the Law; men whom 
the Bible names "of the same blood'' with the 
Prophets and Apostles; men "for whom Christ 
died," and who are "statues of God in ebony " — 
that they are held in this condition and made to feel 
the full burthen of a corrupt society, and doomed 
from their birth to degradation and infamy, their very 
name a mock-word ; their life a retreat, not a pro- 
gress, — for the general and natural effect of slavery 
is to lessen the qualities of a man in the slave as he 
increases in stature or in years, — their children, 
their wives, their own bones and sinews at the mercy 
of a master ! That these things are so, is known to 
all of us ; well known from our childhood. 

Every man who has ever thought at all on any 
subject, and has at the same time a particle of man- 
hood in him, knows that this state of slavery would 
be to him worse than a thousand deaths; that set 
death in one scale, and hopeless slavery for himself 
and children in the other, he would not hesitate in 
his choice, but would say, " Give me Death, though 
the life be ground out of me with the most exquisite 
tortures of lingering agony that malice can invent or 
tyranny inflict." To the African thus made the vic- 
tim of American cupidity and crime, the state of 



SERMON OF SLAVERY. 7 

slavery, it will be said, may not appear so degrading 
as to you and me, fn hi 1 as never before been civil- 
ized, and though the untaught instinct of a man bid 
him love freedom, yet Christianity has not revealed 
to him the truth, that al! i en are brothers before God, 
born ruith equal rights. But this fact is no excuse 
or extenuation of our crime. Who would justify a 
knave in plundering a little girl out of a fortune that 
she inherited, on the ground that she was a little girl 
" of tender years," and had never enjoyed or even 
beheld her birthright? The fact, that the injured 
party was ignorant and weak, would only enhance 
and aggravate the offence, adding new baseness and 
the suspicion of cowardice to guilt. If the African 
be so low, that the condition of slavery is tolerable in 
his eyes, and he can dance in his chains — happy in 
the absence of the whip — it is all the more a sin, 
in the cultivated and the strong, in the Christian (!) 
to tyrannize over the feeble and defenceless. Men 
at the South v/ith the Bible in one hand — with the 
Declaration of Independence in the other hand — 
with the words of Jesus, •' Love your Neighbor as 
yourself," pealing upon them from all quarters, at- 
tempt to JUSTIFY Slavery ; not to excuse, to cloah or 
conceal the thing, but to vindicate and defend it. 
This attempt, when made by reflecting men in their 
cool moments, discovers a greater degree of black- 
ness of heart than the kidnapping of men itself. It 
is premeditated wickedness grown conscious of itself. 
The plain truth of the matter is this : — Men who wish 
for wecdth and luxury, but hate the toil and sweat, 
which are their natural price, brought the African to 



8 SERMON OF SLAVERY. 

America ; they maize his chains ; they live by his 
tears ; they dance to the piping of his groans ; they 
fatten on his sweat and are ptampered hy his blood. 
If these men spoke as plainly as they must needs 
think, they would say openly ; " our Sin captured 
these men on the African sands ; our Sin fettered 
them in Slavery ; and please God, our Sin shall keep 
them in Slavery till the world ends." This has been 
thought long enough, it is high time it was said also, 
that we may know what we are about and where we 
stand. 

Men at the North, sometimes, attempt to gloss the 
matter over, and hush it up by saying the least possi- 
ble on the subject. They tell us that some masters 
are '^ excellent Christians," — no doubt it is so, esti- 
mating these masters by the common run of Chris- 
tians, — you find such on the deck of pirate ships ; in 
the dens of Robbers. But suppose some slaveholders 
are as good Christians as Fenelon, or St, Peter ; still 
a sin is Sin, though a Christian commit it. Our 
Fathers did not think " taxation without representa- 
tion " any the less an evil because imposed by " his 
most Christian majesty," a King of Christians. 

Then too, it is said, " the slaves are very happy, 
and it is a great pity to disturb them," that " the 
whole mass are better fed, and clothed, and are 
troubled with fewer cares than working men at the 
North." Suppose this true also, what then ? Do you 
estimate your welfare in pounds of beef; in yards of 
cloth ; in exemption from the cares of a man ! If so 
all appeal to you is vain, your own soul has become 
servile. The Saviour of the world was worse fed 



SERMON OF SLAVERY. 9 

and clothed, no doubt, than many a Georgian Slave, 
and had not where to lay his head, wearied with many 
cares ; but has your Christianity taught you that was 
an evil, and the slave's hutch at night, and pottage by 
day, and exemption from a man's cares by night and 
day are a good, a good to be weighed against free- 
dom ! Then are you unworthy the soil you stand 
on ; you contaminate the air of New England, which 
free men died to transmit to their children free ! 

Still further it is said, '' the sufferings of slaves 
are often exaggerated." This may be true. No 
doubt there have been exaggerations of particular 
cases. Every slave owner is not a demon, not a 
base man. No doubt there are what are called good 
Christians, men that would be ornaments to a Chris- 
tian Church, among slaveholders. But though there 
have been exaggerations in details, yet the awful sum 
of misery, unspeakable wretchedness, which hangs 
over two millions of slaves is such that eye hath not 
seen it ; nor ear heard it ; nor heart conceived of it. 
It were so if all their masters were Christians in 
character, in action, still retaining slaves. How much 
deeper and wilder must swell that wide welterino- sea 
of human agony, when the masters are what we know 
so many are, hard-hearted and rapacious, insolent 
and brutal ! 

This attempt to gloss the matter over and veil the 
fact, comes from two classes of men. 

1. Some make the attempt from a real design to 
promote peace. They see no way to abate this mis- 
chief; they see '' the folly and extravagance " of such 
as propose " dangerous measures," and therefore they 



10 SERMON OF SLAVERY. 

would have us say nothing about it. The writhing 
patient is very sick ; the leech more venturesome than 
skilful, and the friends fearful to try the remedy, un- 
willing to summon wiser advice, declare the sick 
man is well as ever if you will only let him alone ! 
These men mourn that any one should hold another 
in bondage ; they think our fathers were illustrious 
heroes, for fighting dreadful wars with the parent 
country rather than pay a little tax against their will, 
but that this evil of slavery can never be healed ; 
therefore in the benevolence of their heart, they refuse 
to believe all the stories of suffering that reach their 
ears. The imagination of a kind man recoils at the 
thought of so much wretchedness, still more, if con- 
vinced that it cannot be abated. Nov/ these men 
are governed by the best of motives, but it does not 
follow that their opinions are so just as their motives 
are good. 

2. Bat there are others, who are iDilUng to cminte- 
nancc the sin and continue it, well knoicing that it is 
a sin. They would not have it abated. They tell 
you of the stupidity of the African ; that he is made 
for nothing but a slave; is allied to the baboon and 
the ape, and is as much in his place when fettered, 
ignorant and savage, in a rice field, to toil under a 
taskmaster's whip, as a New Englander, free and 
educated, is in his place, when felling forests, plan- 
ning railroads, or "conducting" a Steam Engine. 
Hard treatment and poor fare, say they, are the Black 
man's due. Besides, they add, there is a natural an- 
tipathy between the black race and the white, which 
only the love of money, or the love of power, on the 



SERMON OF SLAVERY., 11 

part of the white is capable of overcoming ; that the 
blacks are an inferior race, and therefore the white 
Saxons are justified in making them slaves. They 
think the strong have a right to the services of the 
weak, forgetting that the rule of Reason, the rule of 
Christianity is just the other way; "We that are 
strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak." 
They would have us follow the old rule, '^ that they 
should get who have the power, and they should heep 
who can." Of this class nothing further need be 
said save this : that they are very numerous and 
quote the New-Testament in support of slavery, thus 
contriving to pass for Christians, and have made such 
a stir in the land that it is scarce safe to open one's 
mouth and strip the veil from off this sin. 

If some one should come and tell us that a new 
race of men had been discovered living at the bot- 
tom of the sea, who had a government which declared 
that all men were " born free," and a Religion which 
laid down these excellent maxims : that all men were 
brothers ; that God was no respecter of persons, and 
that man's chief earthly duty was to love and serve 
his fellow mortals, keeping the law God Himself had 
made for man, we should say ; what an admirable 
government ! what a beautiful Religion ! what a free, 
religious, and blessed people they must be. " Happy 
is the people that is in such a case. Yea happy is 
that people whose God is the Lord." But if we were 
told that a part of that nation had seized certain 
men weaker than themselves, whom their government 
had declared '' free," whom their Religion called 
" Brothers " to the best of men, that they held these 



12 SERMON OF SLAVERY. 

men in bondage, making them do all their master's 
work, and receive no recompense, but a wretched 
life which they were to transmit to their children, and 
that in the mean time the other part of the nation 
looked on, and said nothing against this shameful 
wrong; that they encouraged the crime and lent their 
wisdom, their wealth, and their valor to support and 
perpetuate this infamous institution, what should we 
say ? Certainly that these men were Liars ! Liars 
before their government ! Liars before their God ! 
Such is the fact. This people does not live at the 
bottom of the sea, but on the firm land, and boasts 
the name of Republic, and Christian Commonwealth \ 

The opinion of good and religious men here amongst 
us seems to be, that slavery is a great Sin and ought to 
be abolished as soon as possible ; that the talent and 
piety of the nation cannot be better employed than 
in devising the speediest and most effectual way of 
exterminating the evil. Such of them as see a way 
to abolish the wrong cry aloud and publish the 
tidings ; others who see no way state that fact also, 
not failing to express their dread of all violent meas- 
ures. Such is the conviction of good and religious 
men at the North. But there is another opinion a little 
different, which is held by a different class of men 
at the North; — they think that davery is a great sin, 
and ought to he hept up so long as men can make 
money hy it. But if the suppression of slavery could 
be effected, — not as our fathers won their freedom, by 
blood and war, — so gently as not to ruffle a sleeping 
baby's eyelid, yet if it diminished the crop of rice. 



SERMON OF SLAVERY. 13 

or cotton, or tobacco, or corn, a single quintal a year, 
it would be a great mistake to free, cultivate. Chris- 
tianize, and bless these millions of men ! No one, I 
take it, will doubt this is a quite common opinion 
here in New England. The cause of this opinion 
will presently be touched upon. To show what base- 
ness was implied in holding such opinions, would be 
simply a waste of time. 

We all know there is at the North a small body 
of men, called by various names, and treated with 
various marks of disrespect, who are zealously striv- 
ing to procure the liberation of slaves, in a peaceable 
and quiet way. They are willing to make any sacri- 
fice for this end. They start from the maxim, that 
Slavery is Sin, and that sin is to be abandoned at 
once, and forever, come what will come of it. 
These men, it is said, are sometimes extravagant in 
their speech ; they do not treat the " patriarchal in- 
stitution " with becoming reverence ; they call slave- 
holders hard names, and appeal to all who have a 
heart in their bosoms, and to some who Jind none 
there, to join them and end the patriarchal institution 
by wise and Christian measures. What wonder is it 
that these men sometimes grow warm in their argu- 
ments ? What wonder that their heart burns when 
they think of so many women exposed to contamina- 
tion and nameless abuse ; of so many children reared 
like beasts, and sold as oxen ; of so many men own- 
ing no property in their hands, or their feet, their 
hearts, or their lives ! The wonder is all the other 
side, that they do not go to further extremities, sinful 
2 



14 SERMON OF SLAVERY. 

as it might be, and like St. John in his youth, pray 
for Jire to come doicn from Heaven and burn up the 
sinners, or like Paul, when he had not the excuse of 
youthful blood, ask God to curse them. Yet they 
do none of these things ; never think of an appeal to 
the strong arm, but the Christian heart. When a man 
in this land of ours, begins to feel this desperate 
iniquity and sees the deadness of those around him ; 
the silly game played over his head by political parties 
and political leaders ; the game yet sillier played by 
theological parties and theological leaders, while the 
land lies overgrown w^ith " trespasses and sins," he 
may be pardoned if he shrieks over human sufferings 
and human crime ; if he cries out and spares not, 
but wishes he had a mouth in his hands, and a mouth 
in his feet, and was Speech all over, that he might 
protest in every limb against this abomination which 
maketh the heart desolate. There is no doubt that 
these men are sometimes extravagant ! There need 
be no wonder at that fact. The best of men have 
their infirmities, but if this extravagance be one of 
them, what shall we call the deadness of so many 
more amongst us? An infirmity? What shall we say 
of the sin itself? An infirmity also? Honest souls 
engaged in a good work, fired with a great idea, some- 
times forget the settled decorum of Speech, common- 
ly observed in Forum and Pulpit, and call sin Sin. 
If the New Testament tell truth, Paul did so, and it 
was thought he would " turn the world upside down," 
while he was only striving to set it right. John the 
Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth did the same thing, 
and though one left his head in a charger, and the 



SERMON OF SLAVERY. 15 

other his body on a cross, yet the world thinks at this 
day they did God's great work with their sincerity of 
speech. 

The men who move in this matter encounter oppo- 
sition from two classes of men ; from the moderate^ 
who do not see the wisdom of their measures, and 
who fear that the slave if set free will be worse off than 
before, or who think that the welfare of the masters 
is not sufficiently cared for. These moderate men 
think " we had better not meddle with the matter at 
present," but by and by, at a convenient season, they 
will venture to look into it. Now these moderate men 
it is not likely would ever think of doing the work until 
it is all done, yet deserve the gratitude of the public ; 
of the more enthusiastic Abolitionists. A balance 
wheel is useful to a machine ; though it renders 
more force necessary at first to start the machine, it 
gives it stability and power when once set a moving. 
In certain stages of vegetation a chilly day is a most 
auspicious event. 

Then too they encounter opposition from the selfish, 
v/ho see, or think they see, that the white masters 
will lose some thousands of millions of dollars, if 
slavery be abolished I Who has forgotten the men 
that opposed the introduction of Christianity at Eph- 
esus, — the craftsmen that made silver shrines for 
Diana! 

I know some men say, " we have nothing to do 
with it. Slavery is the affair of the slave-owners and 
the slaves, not yours and mine. Let them abate it 
when they will." A most unchristian saying is this. 



16 SERMON OF SLAVERY. 

Slavery ! we have something to do with it. The sugar 
and rice we eat, the cotton we wear, are the work of 
the slave. His wrongs are imported to us in these 
things. We eat his flesh and drink his blood. I need 
not speak of our political connection with slavery. 
You all know what that is, and its effect on us here. 
But socially, individually, we are brought into con- 
tact with it every day. If there is a crime in the 
land knovvn to us, and we do not protest against it 
to the extent of our ability, we are partners of that 
crime. It is not many years since it was said, tem- 
perate men had nothing to do with the sin of drunk- 
enness ; though they paid for it out of their purse ! 
When they looked they found they had much to do 
with it, and sought to end it. I have no doubt, to go 
back to the Hebrew mythical tale, that when God 
called Cain, "Where is Abel? " he said, "I have 
nothing to do with it ; that is Abel's affair. Am I 
my brother's keeper '? " If the Law of Moses made 
it the duty of a Hebrew to lift up the beast of a 
public enemy which had stumbled in the street, how 
much more does the Law of God make it a Christ- 
ian's duty to tell his brother of his sin, and help him 
out of it ; how much more to rescue the oppressed, — 
'' to bind up the broken-hearted; to proclaim liberty 
to the captives, the opening of the prison to them that 
are bound ?" 

Such then is slavery at the South ; such the action 
of men at the North to attack or to defend it. But 
look a moment at the ccm^c of this sin, and of its de- 
fence. It comes from the desire to get gain, comfort. 



SERMON OF SLAVERY. 17 

or luxury; to have power over matter, without work- 
ing or paying the honest price of that gain, comfort, 
luxury, and power ; it is the spirit which would know- 
ingly and of set purpose injure another for the sake 
of gaining some benefit to yourself. Such a spirit 
would hold slaves everywhere, if it were possible. 
Now when the question is put to any fair man, — Is 
not this spirit active at the North as well as the 
South ? there is but one answer. The man who 
would use his fellow man as a tool merely, and injure 
him by that use ; who would force another in any 
way to bend to his caprice ; who would take advan- 
tage of his ignorance, his credulity, his superstition, 
or his poverty, to enrich and comfort himself; in a 
word, who would use his neighbor to his neighbor's 
hurt, — that man has the spirit of slaveholding, and 
were circumstances but different, he would chain his 
brethren with iron bonds. If you, for your own sake, 
would unjustly put any man in ja position which de- 
grades him in your eyes, in his own eyes, in the eyes 
of his fellow men, you have the spirit of the slave- 
holder. There is much of this spirit with us still. 
This is the reason that slavery finds so many support- 
ers amongst us; that we deliver up the fugitives, and 
" bewray him that wandereth," sheltering ourselves 
under the plea, that we keep the law of the land, 
written by man on parchment, half a century ago, 
while we violate the Law of Nature, written everlast- 
ingly by God on the walls of the world. It was 
through this spirit, — so genial to our Anglo Saxon 
blood, — that our fathers slew the Indians who would 
not work, and the Southern planter enslaves the Af- 
2* 



18 SERMON OF SLAVERY. 

rican, who ivill work. Both acted from the same 
motives, at North and South ; killing or enslaving. 
That spirit is still with us, and shows itself in many 
shapes that need not be touched on now. It is not 
owing so much to our superior goodness perhaps, as 
to a fortunate accident, that we have no slaves here 
at this day. They are not projitahle. The shrewd 
men of our land discerned the fact long ago, and set- 
tled the question. Doubtless we have still social in- 
stitutions which eyes more Christian than ours shall 
one day look upon as evils, only less than that of 
slavery itself. But it is gradually that we gain light ; 
he that converts it to Life as fast as it comes, does 
well. 

II. Let a word be said on the other kind of slave- 
ry ; that ivhich comes from a cause internal to our- 
selves. This is common at the North, and South, 
and East, and West. In this case the man is pre- 
vented from doing what is best for him, not by some 
other man who has bound him, but by some passion 
or prejudice, superstition or 5m. Here the mischief 
is in his own heart. If you look around you, you 
find many that bear the mark of the beast ; branded 
on the forehead and the right hand; branded as 
slaves. " He that committeth sin is the slave of sin." 
The avaricious man is a slave. He cannot think a 
thought but as his master bids. He cannot see a 
truth, if a dollar intervene. He cannot relieve the 
poor, nor sympathize with the distressed, nor yield to 
the humane impulse of his natural heart. If he sees 
in the newspaper a sentence on the wastefulness or the 



SERMON OF SLAVERY. 19 

idleness of the poor, he remembers it forever ; but a 
word in the Bible to encourage charity, — he never 
finds that. 

The passionate man is a slave; he lies at the mercy 
of the accidents of a day. If his affairs go well, he 
is calm and peaceful ; but if some little mistake 
arise, he is filled with confusion, and the demon that 
rules him draws the chain. This master has many a 
slave under his yoke. He is more cruel than any 
planter in Cuba or Trinidad. He not only separates 
friend from friend, parent from child, and husband 
from wife, but what is worse yet, prevents their loving 
one another while they are together. This makes 
man a tyrant, not a husband ; woman a fiend, not an 
angel, as God made her to be. This renders marriage a 
necessary evil, and housekeeping a perpetual curse, 
for it takes the little trifles which happen everywhere, 
except between angels, and makes them very great 
matters; it converts mistakes into faults; accidents 
into vices ; errors into crimes ; and so rends asunder 
the peace of families, and in a single twelvemonth 
disturbs more marriages than all the shaveholders of 
Carolina in a century. 

So the peevish man is a slave. His ill humor 
watches him like a demon. Oft-times it casteth him 
into the fire, and often into the water. In the morn- 
ing he complains that his caprice is not complied 
with ; in the evening that it is. He is never peaceful, 
except when angry ; never quiet, but in a storm. He 
is free to do nothing good ; so he acts badly, thinks 
badly, feels badly, — three attributes of a Devil. A 
yoke of iron and fetters of brass were grievous to 



20 SERMON OF SLAVERY. 

bear, no doubt ; the whip of a task-master makes 
wounds in the flesh ; but God save us from the tyran- 
ny of the peevish, both what they inflict and what 
they suffer. 

The intemperate man also is a slave ; one most to- 
tally subjugated. His vice exposes him to the con- 
tempt and insult of base men, as well as to the pity 
of the good. Not only this, but his master strips 
him of his understanding ; takes away his common 
sense, conscience, his Reason, Religion, — qualities 
that make a man differ from a beast ; on his gar- 
ments, his face, his wife, and child, is written in great 
staring letters, so that he may read that runs — This 
man also has sold his birthright and hccome a slave. 
The jealous planter forbids his slave to learn ; but he 
cannot take from him the understanding he has got. 
This refinement of torture it was left for Intemper- 
ance to exercise, levelling at once the distinctions 
between rude and polished. 

Bodily slavery is one of the- greatest wrongs that 
man can inflict on man; an evil not to be measured 
by the external and visible vroe which it entails on 
the victim, but by the deep internal ruin which it is 
its direct tendency to produce. If I had the tongue 
of the Archangel I could not give utterance to the 
awfulness of this evil. There is no danger that this 
be exaggerated, — no more than that the Sun in a 
picture be painted too bright. A wise man would do 
anything within the compass of righteousness, or 
suffer a hundred deaths, if that were possible, rather 
than yield himself a slave, to be the tool and chattel 



SERMON OF SLAVERY. 21 

of a master, who views him as a Dog. A religious 
man will do all within the compass of religion, to 
rescue others from a fate so hard. What we can do 
for this, then, let us do with faith in Him who brings 
good out of evil. You and I cannot move multitudes 
of men, but we can each move one, and so contribute 
our mite to remove the outward obstacles that oppose 
the freedom of man. 

I know men say that you and I ought not to move 
in this matter ; that we have nothing to do with it. 
They urge in argument that the Constitution of the 
United States is the Supreme Law of the land, and 
that sanctions slavery. But it is the supreme law 
made by the voters, like the statutes denouncing cap- 
ital punishment. What voters have made can voters 
unmake. There is no Supreme Law but that made 
by God ; if our laws contradict that, the sooner they 
end, or the sooner they are broken, why, the better. 
It seems to be thought a very great thing to run coun- 
ter to a law of man, written on parchment ; a very 
little thing to run counter to tlie Laiu of Almighty 
God, Judge of the quick and the dead. Has He sanc- 
tioned slavery? "Oh yes," say some, and cite Old 
Testament and New Testament in proof thereof It 
has been said, " The Devil can quote Scripture for 
his purpose." We need not settle that question now, 
but it is certain that men can quote it to support 
Despotism when that is the order of the day, — or 
Freedom when that is the " law of the land ; " certain 
that men defend Drunkenness and War, or Sobriety 
and Peace out of its pages. . A man finds what he 
looks for. Now some tell us that Paul said, " Let 



22 SERMON OF SLAVERY. 

every soul be subject unto the higher powers," mean- 
ing the " law of the land," — " for the powers that he 
are ordained of God.'^ Did Paul do so? Not at all ; 
he resisted the very religion established by the poivers 
that were. But it will be said, he did not war direct- 
ly with slavery, yet lived in the midst of slaveholders. 
Paul had work enough to do, no doubt, without that 
of abolishing slavery ; perhaps he had not his eyes 
open to this great sin, — not seeing it as a sin. This 
is certain, that he thought the world was to end in 
his own lifetime, and therefore if he did see the 
wickedness of the '' institution," he may have thought 
it not worth while to attempt to remove what would 
so soon perish, at the " coming of the Lord." But 
it is said still further, Jesus himself did not forbid 
slavery in set speech. Did he forbid by name any 
one of a hundred other vices that might be men- 
tioned ? He did not forbid the excessive use of in- 
toxicating liquors in that way. Nay, we are told^in 
the fourth gospel, that he made three or four barrels 
of wine, — of superior quality too, — for a single 
wedding in a little country town, in Cana of Galilee! 
Does his silence or his alleged action afford any ex- 
cuse for that sin also? It is a very sad state of mind 
in which a man can forget all the principles which 
Jesus laid down, all the spirit of his doctrine and his 
life, and then quibble about this, — that he did not 
forbid slavery in words ! Men that cite him in de- 
fence of slavery, seem to forget the *' Sermon on the 
Mount;" yes, all of his teachings, and would do 
well to read for their special edification, what is said 
to their prototypes in the twenty-third chapter of 
Matthew, and elsewhere. 



SERMON OF SLAVERY. 23 

Bodily slavery, though established by the powers 
that be, is completely in the hands of the voters, for 
they are the powers that be ; is no more sanctioned 
by the Supreme law of the land, than Stealing or 
Murder. No enactment of man can make that right 
which was wrong before. It can never be abstractly 
right in any circumstances, to do what is abstractly 
wrong. 

But that other slavery, which comes from yourself, 
that is wholly within your power. And which, think 
you, is the worse, to be unwillingly the slave of a 
man and chained and whipped, or to be the voluntary 
slave of Avarice, Passion, Peevishness, Intemperance ! 
It is better that your body be forcibly constrained, 
bought and sold, than that your soul, yourself, be 
held in thraldom. The spirit of a Slave may be pure 
as an angel's ; sometimes as lofty and as blessed too. 
The comforts of Religion, when the heart once wel- 
comes them, are as beautiful in a slave's cabin, as in 
a king's court. When Death shakes off the slave's 
body, the chain falls with it, and the man, disen- 
thralled at last, goes where the wicked cease from 
troubling, where the weary are at rest, where the 
slave is free from his master ; yes, where faithful use 
of the smallest talent, and humblest opportunity has 
its reward, and unmerited suffering finds its ample 
recompense. But the voluntary slavery under Sin — 
it has no bright side. None in life ; in death no 
more. You may flee from a task-master ; not from 
yourself. 

Body-slavery is so bad, that the sun might be par- 
doned if it turned back, refusing to shine on such a 



24 SERMON OF SLAVERY. 

sin ; on a land contaminated with its stain. But Soul- 
slavery, what shall we say of that ! Our fathers 
hongtii political freedom at a great price; they sailed 
the sea in storms ; they dwelt here aliens on a hostile 
soil, the world's outcasts; in cold and hunger, in toil 
and want they dwelt here ; they fought desperate 
wars in freedom's name ! Yet they bought it cheap. 
You and I were base men, if we would not give much 
more than they paid sooner than lose the inherit- 
ance. 

But freedom for the soul to act right, think right, 
feel right, you cannot inherit ; that you must win 
for yourself Yet it is offered you at no great price. 
You may take it who will. It is the birthright of 
you and me and each of us ; if we keep its condi- 
tions it is ours. Yet it is only to be had by the re- 
ligious man — the man true to the nature God gave 
him. Without His Spirit in your heart you have no 
freedom. Resist His Law, revealed in Nature, in 
the later scripture of the Bible, in your own soul ; 
resist it by sin, you are a slave, you must be a slave. 
Obey that Law, you are Christ's freeman ; Nature 
and God on your side. How strange it would be 
that one man should be found on all the hills of Nev/ 
England, of soul so base, of spirit so dastardly, that 
of his own consent took on him the yoke of slavery; 
went into the service of Sin ; toiled with that leprous 
host, in hopeless unrecompensed misery, without God, 
without Heaven, without Hope. Strange, indeed, that 
in this little village, there should be men who care 
not for the soul's freedom, but consent to live, no, to 
die daily, in the service of Sin. 



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